THE SPAN OF THEIR LIFE TOGETHER is to be so short that everything will happen to them for both the first and the last time.

Early in the night, in the violence of their lovemaking, he snapped the thread of the old necklace that she never removed. The little amber beads clattered onto the floor, and as the rain began to fall, it mimicked at first this gentle buckshotlike patter, then changed its tune, turned into a downpour, torrents of water, and ultimately, an ocean surge that flooded into the room. After a blazing hot day, the dry wind rustling like insect wings, this tidal wave reaches their naked bodies, filling the sheets with the damp aroma of leaves and the bitter freshness of the plains. The wall facing the bed does not exist, only gaps in the charred timbers, the havoc wrought by the fire of two weeks ago. Beyond this space, the purple, resinous flesh of the stormy sky swells heavily. The first and last May storm of their shared life.

She gets up; draws the table toward the corner that is most sheltered from the deluge; then pauses beside the gaping wall. He stands up, goes to join her, slips his arms around her, his mouth buried in her hair, his gaze lost in the seething darkness outside the gap. A long, soaking wet ribbon of wind clings to their skin; the man shivers and murmurs in the woman's ear: "So you never feel the cold, then…" She laughs softly: "I've been out here on the steppes for over twenty years. And you… a year? There you are… You'll get used to it. You'll see…"

A train shakes the track heavily very close to the house. The puffing of the engine cuts into the darkness, through the rain. The mass of cars comes to a halt beneath the windows, the beam from a lamp rakes through the room. The man and woman are silent, pressed close together.